The tour couldn't realistically cover all two hundred-plus bases—there wasn't enough time, and Daisy had no teleporter. She selected the significant ones, made appearances to signal that leadership was watching, and moved on. Presence established, boxes checked.
The Dock: S.H.I.E.L.D.'s largest shipbuilding facility.
Red Worm: chemical production and antidote research.
The Cube: maximum-security containment for superhuman offenders.
The Torch: a nuclear-hardened underground command center.
The Carousel: core data infrastructure—three supercomputers and the entirety of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s internal records.
Alongside a rotating selection of regional bases chosen for headcount or geographic position, Daisy brought her subordinates through them all at a brisk clip. At each stop she said what needed to be said, listened to what needed to be heard, and kept moving.
Red Worm was the exception.
They had a Kree corpse.
Half of one, technically. Upper body only, the lower half entirely absent. It lay preserved in a cryogenic pod with a grimness that made the stomach clench.
The skin was deep blue, rough as coarse sandpaper. The body type was roughly human in scale, but the knuckles and neck were disproportionately thick. Evaluation reports noted the Kree's external tissue showed broad resistance to environmental extremes across nearly every tested variable.
Against Eternal physiology or Inhuman genetics, Kree genetics were little more than dregs.
But the specimen itself was telling a story. The Kree hadn't only used Eternal genes to engineer the Inhumans—they'd run the experiments on themselves first. The external cell material hadn't delivered meaningful power or physical enhancement. What it had delivered was persistence: a body dead for seventy years, and the cells were still active. That, specifically, was the Eternals' contribution.
"Three full generations of researchers have devoted their careers to this specimen," said the lab director—an elderly man whose face was a roadmap of age spots. He had carved time out of his schedule specifically to receive the delegation from headquarters. The subtext running through every sentence was we need more funding, and we need it now. "A genetic masterwork. I don't say that lightly."
Daisy made a noncommittal sound.
Seventy years. No result.
Hand this to Stark or Reed Richards, and one of them would have produced something world-changing in a week. This team had been at it for three generations.
This was her first time in close proximity to a Kree. She felt a pull even through the cryopod.
Not a pull at the level of life essence—something more primal. Like the smell of food. Or, strangely, laundry detergent.
If she shifted into Kree form right now, she suspected she could absorb the residual life force still clinging to the corpse. Not a skill exclusive to her—it was a trait found in a small fraction of female Kree: born with powerful psychic ability, they could entrance male Kree and siphon their life force to replenish what they lacked. No deeper benefit beyond that. Roughly equivalent to a healing potion, in-game terms—with the added complication of being addictive. More liability than asset. She reined the instinct back quickly.
"I want to see the research records."
The director bustled over with an armful of files. No posturing, no performance. Research was made to be reviewed, and the Deputy Director asking to see his reports was entirely reasonable. He handed them over without objection.
The file was enormous—dictionary-thick. She flipped through it at speed.
"An extraordinary specimen—we still don't know how it was originally recovered. The scientific value is incalculable, and unfortunately our funding constraints have prevented large-scale analysis..." The director hadn't stopped talking since she opened the first page. The throughline was consistent: funding.
"The specimen is exceptional. Handle it with care—it belongs to all of humanity," Daisy answered on autopilot, still reading.
Precious? The Nega-Bomb hadn't detonated yet. The Large Magellanic Cloud still held thirty billion Kree across more than a thousand worlds. Supply was practically unlimited. But that was not information for this room.
Most of the data tracked closely with what PERIL had recorded when Daisy shifted into Kree form herself—just higher-resolution, since the research team could slice and analyze in ways she couldn't subject herself to.
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s scientists had their sights set on one objective: splicing Kree DNA into human DNA. It wasn't possible. It had never been possible. Captain Marvel could fuse two species' genetic lineages because the Psyche-Magnitron's explosion had briefly placed her between existing and not existing—a loophole in the seams of reality. Without an Eternal gene baseline, the two lineages were fundamentally incompatible. The research direction was wrong from the first premise.
She found Baldy's signature on the original authorization, and she could read exactly what state of mind he'd been in when he'd signed it. The man had seen Captain Marvel's power firsthand and been floored. Captain Marvel hadn't been cagey about her situation the way Daisy always was: she'd explained everything plainly, and Fury had had no choice but to pursue the thread. You didn't witness that order of combat power and file it under interesting, moving on. He'd simply lost enthusiasm over the years as results failed to materialize and mutants kept appearing faster than they could be catalogued.
The current research direction was categorically wrong. A spacefaring empire had thrown enormous resources at this exact problem and never cracked it. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s handful of insular specialists working in a vacuum could grind away for another seventy years and come up equally empty.
Daisy had made her decision: she was dissolving this department, and the Kree specimen would be put to a scientifically rational use elsewhere.
She left Red Worm and went directly to Fury.
"Heard you went to see the alien." Baldy was still in his trench coat, still buried in what appeared to be an inexhaustible stack of paperwork. "Thoughts?"
Daisy helped herself to a chair. "I saw your authorization signature on the original project. Honestly? I think you're playing with fire."
"You run the research and get a result—then what? You force-fuse two different species' genes. Are the people who result still human? Where is humanity's pride in that? We can barely accommodate mutants as it is. Now you want to inject alien genetics directly into the human genome." She held his gaze. "Are you certain nothing goes wrong?"
Her own genetics were chaos top to bottom, but Daisy had always considered herself human. Outside of operational necessity, she maintained a human form—partly to avoid detection, partly as a reminder. Don't lose the thread.
Fury folded his hands on the desk. "You've read my reports. The specimen at Red Worm is Mar-Vell's people." His expression didn't shift. "They built a civilization powerful enough to span galaxies. Mar-Vell himself had a gentle nature. His kind, as a whole, do not."
He let that settle.
"Don't you think we should be preparing in advance?"